A Year Ago: California Graphics plans New Year Voodoo 2 card
California Graphics says it will be among the first board makers to build around 3Dfx's much-awaited Voodoo 2 graphics processor when it ships its latest cards early next year.
Aimed at the serious gamer market, the 3D Wizard includes one Pixel/fx and two Texel/fx processors and is planned to ship with12Mb of graphics RAM: 4Mb of frame buffer and 4Mb for each of the two texture processors.
California said the PCI-based card will offer 100 frames per second (fps) performance or even more when twin cards are used, where one card draws the even scan lines and the other card is dedicated to drawing the odd scan lines. The firm claims the two-card configuration creates a maximum memory bandwidth of 4.3Gb/sec and 180 million pixels per second.
California said the 3D Wizard will be compatible with the current base of over 400 games that have been written to the 3Dfx chipset, and added that library will gain a "noticeable improvement" from the new chip.
The firm claims GLQuake will run at 116 fps on a Voodoo 2 with all features turned on based on a 266MHz Pentium II-based system; or 147 fps in a 300MHz Pentium II machine with twin graphics cards.
"Just one board will deliver over three times the performance of the current Voodoo Graphics-based boards, so you can imagine just how amazing the dual combination will be," said Vincenzo Coccoli, chairman and CEO of California Graphics in a prepared statement.
Like California's 3D Emotion, the 3D Wizard will also feature a TV-out capability.
The card will ship in January or February 1998 at about £200 + VAT. AGP versions will be available later in 1998. UK availability will be through Luton, Beds.-based Mentor Computer Systems.
Mentor Computer Systems: 01582-483381